Owning a restaurant can make you feel like you are on top of the world. But if someone makes any mistakes in a food establishment, you could be out of luck in a matter of days.
That's the last thing you want!
To prevent this, you want to make sure your food establishment is putting food safety at the top of the priority list.
Here are five food safety mistakes to avoid any food safety violations!
1. Improper Hand Washing
This is one of the biggest food safety mistakes, as it can be easy to do. And only about 25% of food workers do this properly. Also, one-third of adults fail to wash their hands when leaving the bathroom.
However, that can cause a lot of issues at the food establishment as well as for people who visit it.
To make sure that you are properly washing your hands, you should be using warm water when you wash your hands. Be sure to scrub them for about 10-15 seconds for a total handwash time of at least 20 seconds, or as long as it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song twice. Make sure to also wash under your fingernails since dirt and bacteria can get under there.
Be sure to dry them with an air dryer or single use paper towels and not on your pants.
2. Insufficient Labeling
When you store food, you need to make sure it is labeled with the date properly. If it is not, then the food may be old and could cause an outbreak of foodborne illness. Out-of-date food can also attract pest infestations and flies into your business, which is a huge food safety violation and can cause food poisoning when consumed.
When you put food into a refrigerator or freezer at a food establishment, it is important to put a use-by-date on the food container so that you will know when to dispose of it.
3. Eating on the Job
When people eat on the job, it is likely that food crumbs are left behind. That will attract pests, insects, cockroaches, and rodents into the establishment which calls for a health code violation. Also, your hand can be contaminated and spread bacteria.
Eating food could also cause crumbs to get into other food that you are serving to guests, which is just wrong!
4. Poor Storage Practices
If you are storing your food incorrectly, then you are definitely jeopardizing your establishment. You need to ensure that you properly separate raw animal products from other foods.
In fact, not properly separating food has cost the U.S. over $15 billion each year due to foodborne illnesses.
To properly store your food, you have to ensure that you do the following:
- Store meat at the bottom of the fridge
- Inspect arriving shipments for pests, droppings, etc.
- Dry products should be stored at least six inches off the ground
Keep Your Food Establishment Safe
It is easy to make mistakes in a food establishment, but that can jeopardize your business and the health of your customers and workers.
To ensure the safety of everyone, all workers should go through a food safety education course to know the proper ways of food handling. At Cenza, we offer tons of classes to make sure that you and your staff are up-to-date with safety trainings.
Check out our class schedule to book a class for your employees!